


'Til You Came Along and Fixed Me

by torakowalski



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poison, Pre-Canon, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:37:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Clint hates whips.  He hates drug runners.  And, right now, he hates SHIELD for sending them into this.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til You Came Along and Fixed Me

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this for the 'whipping' square on my H/C Bingo card then decided to use the 'poisoning' square instead. So, warnings for both those things, basically.
> 
> With thanks to Nerdwegian for the beta <3

Clint’s hands are bleeding from trying to punch his way through solid wall by the time the noises stop from the next cell over. He feels sick from listening to the whip cracking over and over, and sicker still because Phil didn’t make a sound after his first, startled grunt.

Clint hates whips. He hates drug runners. And, right now, he hates SHIELD for sending them into this.

He lifts his hand and licks blood off his knuckles, ignoring how he’s shaking, just a little.

The cell door bangs open, no warning, and two of the guards are on him before he can do more than take a swing. His knuckles split again against one guard’s jaw, which is satisfying but only earns him a swift punch to the gut that knocks all the air out of his lungs.

They drag him out the cell and down the corridor. He thinks about going limp to make it as hard as possible for them to move him, but then he realises that they might be taking him to Phil and he stops fighting.

“Take a look,” one of the guards says, gripping Clint by the collar and shoving him toward an open cell door. “You want this to happen to you, too?”

Clint looks. All he sees is that Phil’s on the floor, stripped to the waist and bleeding, and then his vision reds out. When he blinks his way clear of the fog that descended, his knee’s dislocated and his lip’s bleeding, but he knows he took at least one guard out before the other shoved him inside and locked the door.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Phil says, voice too quiet and too even, the kind of tone he uses when he’s in way too much pain.

“Yeah? They deserved it.” Clint pushes his way upright and tries to shift closer, but everything hurts. He manages to get close enough to press a hand to the back of Phil’s neck, just above where the whip marks start.

Phil makes a sound that might be a laugh, if you took all the tremors out. “Yeah, they did.” He starts to move and hisses, going still. “Crap.”

There’s a trough of water in the corner, water glistening in the weak sunlight coming through the inch-wide slat of window. Clint decides he doesn’t give a damn if it hurts his knee, stumbles to his feet and pulls his t-shirt off, hobbles over to it and dunking his t-shirt until it’s soaked through.

“I’m pretty sure that’s for torture,” Phil points out helpfully.

“Well, now it’s for cleaning you up,” Clint tells him. He wrings out the t-shirt then limps his way back to Phil. “C’mon, sir, let me get my hands on you.”

“How can I resist?” Phil asks dryly. Clint presses the cloth against Phil’s skin as lightly as he can but Phil still chokes. “Right. That’s how.”

“Sorry, gotta do this. You don’t want an infection.” Clint is not squeamish, like, not at all, but there’s something about Phil’s split skin that’s making his stomach turn over and over. There are marks layered over marks, some just raised red welts, but most leaking blood and clear fluid.

He swallows hard and tries not to think about how hard you have to be hit to break the skin like this, about the way the heavy thwack of the whip judders straight through you, making it impossible to catch a breath. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but definitely not on Phil, who’s supposed to be untouchable.

“Clint,” Phil says softly and Clint realises that he’s stopped moving.

“Sorry.” He moves onto the next cut, then the next, and he’s not thinking, not thinking, not thinking. “There was a guy I knew,” he says without meaning to. “Asshole. He worked with the lions, but he liked to use his whip on the kids too.”

Phil shivers, pressing back into Clint’s hand, even though it has to hurt him. “What happened to him?”

“Third time he tried it on me, Trick Shot put an arrow through his skull.” Trick Shot had been Clint’s hero for that, even though Clint was nine and seeing someone really dead had freaked him out. 

“Pity Trick Shot’s not here to deal with these guys,” Phil says quietly.

Clint lets out a startled laugh. “It’s really not.”

“Well.” Phil shrugs his shoulders stiffly. “We’d kill _him_ again straight after.”

Clint smiles and wants to press his face against Phil’s skin. At least, this time, he has more of a reason than normal not to and it’s easier to resist.

“There,” he says instead, finishing on a mark just above the waistband of Phil’s pants and shoving his blood covered t-shirt into his pocket. He wants to throw it across the room and never deal with it again, but there’s no sense leaving more DNA around than they have to.

“Thanks.” Phil pulls his knees up and hunches around them, forearms bumpy with goose flesh. “Is it cold in here or do I have an infection already?”

“You’re not gonna get an infection,” Clint tells him, which is more a request than any real hope. “That’s why I cleaned you up. It’s pretty freezing, yeah.” He moves until his shoulder is pressed against Phil’s. “I’d give you a hug but I don’t wanna hurt you worse.”

Phil smiles and leans against Clint, which he pretty much never does. “I don’t hug, Barton.”

“Sure, sir. Your cat know that?” The first time he went to Phil’s apartment and found a cat peering imperiously at him over the back of the couch, he’d laughed himself stupid, but it does kind of make sense; Phil has a soft spot for anything that secretly needing him.

And yeah, Clint knows what kind of comparison he’s making there.

Phil doesn’t answer. His skin is cold against Clint’s, which shouldn’t kill him, but Clint wishes he could do something about it, anyway. 

“When do you think the cavalry will get here?” he asks, because he’s got to assume that SHIELD knows where they are. If they don’t, it’s going to be a problem, because even Clint and Phil can’t fight there way out of a fucking dungeon with nothing to use as weapons, especially not when Phil’s hurt.

“Seventeen minutes,” Phil says, clipped.

Clint frowns, turning his head to look at Phil. “That’s specific,” he says. “Even you aren’t that psychic.”

“Want to bet?” Phil asks. He moves around to get more comfortable on the cold stone floor, lines deep and tight around his eyes.

“Yeah.” Clint actually does know better than to bet against Phil, but it’s a good way to distract them both. “What’s the bet?”

Phil doesn’t answer for a minute. When he does, his voice sounds far away. “If I win, let me take you out to dinner.”

Clint should have expected that, really, it’s a running… not a joke, but a running thing between them. Phil asks, Clint turns him down. It’s like a weird tradition of theirs by now. 

“C’mon, sir, that’s not fair,” he complains. It’s harder than ever to say no, when his bare skin is pressed to Phil’s bare skin and Phil’s shaking with pain and cold. 

Phil lifts one shoulder even though that’s got to pull on all his cuts. “You don’t have to take me up on the bet,” he says. He looks Clint dead in the eye. “And, if you do, it presents you with an opportunity.”

“Opportunity?” Clint asks. He normally understands where Phil’s going with something without Phil needing to spell it out.

“Yeah.” Phil swallows hard, hunching a little further over his lap like sitting up’s getting too difficult. “I win, you come out to dinner with me, you win and I never ask you again.”

Clint doesn’t know how he feels about that. Phil’s been asking him out for years. Clint likes that he asks.

“No bet, Coulson,” Clint says, and can’t look at him after that.

“Anyway,” Phil says after a long, awkward pause. “I hope I’m wrong.”

“You do?” Clint snaps his head around to look at him. His face is draining colour in a really nasty way. “Sir?”

“I don’t feel fantastic,” Phil says between gritted teeth. His hands curl into fists against his thighs, fingernails digging into his own skin.

Clint very quietly and very efficiently freaks the fuck out. Considering Phil’s skill for downplaying everything, Clint’s pretty sure that Phil must feel like death to even mention it.

“Sir?” Clint asks again. He puts his hand on Phil’s arm, frowning at the cold, clammy feel of his skin. He didn’t feel like this a minute ago, when Clint was cleaning him up.

Phil’s head stays down, chin almost against his chest. His breathing’s getting uneven, little hitches at the end of every inhale.

“What the fuck?” Clint asks. He curls his hand too hard around Phil’s bicep, knows he needs to let go before his jagged fingernails draw blood, but can’t. “Did they slip you something?” Clint’s been drugged before; he knows the symptoms.

“No, I don’t think so.” Phil’s voice is way too quiet but still steady. He doesn’t _sound_ scared. “I think, I think maybe…” 

“Think maybe what?” Clint asks. He pushes up onto his good knee, preparing to launch himself at the door and do god knows what, anything pretty much, to get someone in here and to fix Phil.

Phil moans quietly and slumps into Clint.

Clint sits down again automatically, bringing his arms up around Phil, taking his weight. Phil’s freezing, shaking in long tremors from head to foot.

“Hey, hey,” Clint says, “lie down, okay. It’s okay, you’ll be okay.” He feels so fucking useless, but he’s usually the one broken or shot or whatever; he doesn’t know what to do from this end.

Phil comes to rest against Clint’s knees, head tucked down and jaw clenched tight. Clint catches a look at Phil’s back and curses. The welts that were red and gross before he cleaned them up are now redder and grosser, the edges peeling back from the rest of Phil’s skin, cracking and peeling nastily.

Clint can’t breathe.

“Phil,” he says, strangled. “Fuck, have I poisoned you?” The water in the trough looked fine and smelled fine but Phil’s falling apart under Clint’s hands and he was fine before Clint tried to clean him up.

Fuck.

“S’not your fault,” Phil forces out. He cracks his eyes open and blinks up at Clint. “These guys are bastards.”

“Yeah.” Clint wants to scream. He was just trying to help. Fuck fuck fuck.

“Stop it,” Phil snaps and does manage to put a bit of force behind it. “This is not your fault.” He stops, whole body shaking through a spasm that leaves him white-faced and clutching at the hand that Clint reached out toward him.

Clint hovers his other hand uselessly over Phil’s shoulder, wanting to touch him, shake him, tell him to stop fucking _convulsing_ , because convulsing means dying and Phil cannot die. He just can’t. 

“Sir,” Clint says urgently, “Phil. Ask me out again.”

Phil’s eyes are open still and he manages to focus on Clint after a lot of effort. “What?” he asks.

“Ask me out again,” Clint repeats. “Come on.”

“Clint,” Phil protests. He’s shaking harder now, beads of sweat in his hairline. He sighs. “Have dinner with me?”

“Yes.” Clint feels dumb, so dumb for doing this now, like this, but he’s really, really scared for Phil and he hates that. “Yes. Let’s have dinner. Take me out to dinner. 

Phil frowns blearily. “You’re only saying that because you think I’m going to die.”

Clint wants to cry. It’s sudden and sharp and he suppresses it ruthlessly. “No, I’m saying it because I want to have dinner with you. But you kind of have to stay alive for that though, so, you know. Get on that.”

“I’m not…” Phil laughs shakily but it turns into a cough. “You think I want to date you so badly that that’s going to work this time, Barton?”

Phil’s been asking him out forever. It’s got to mean something. “Yeah,” he says. His throat feels thick and clogged up. “Yeah. Course you do. You love me.”

Phil loses focus and it’s painful to watch him fight to get it back again. “Yeah,” he says, and Clint thinks for a second that he’s just echoing Clint before it occurs to him that maybe he’s _not_.

Clint doesn’t know what to say. He’s pretty sure that he should say it back, because as much as he’s trying to pretend otherwise, it’s so, so clear that Phil’s dying here. It gets stuck in his throat, trips him up, makes him want to scream instead.

He puts his hand to Phil’s forehead, useless and pointless, just echoing something that he thinks he remembers his mom doing one time. “You’re okay,” he lies.

Phil leans into him, eyes closing again and not reopening this time. His breathing’s loud and uneven, rattling in his lungs and sounding like it’s forcing his way out his throat. Clint finds himself breathing in sync, willing Phil to keep going.

He’s so lost in concentration, watching Phil’s chest rise, fall, hesitate, then slowly rise again, that the sudden rat-a-tat of gunfire jolts him upright in shock.

Phil makes a faint hurt noise.

“Sounds like the cavalry,” Clint murmurs. He curls his arm tighter around Phil’s back, totally prepared to carry Phil out of here himself, if everyone else is too busy shooting to help him. 

He can hear screams, yells, the sounds of bullets getting louder and louder.

“Was that sixteen minutes?” he asks.

Phil doesn’t answer. In fact, Phil’s silent.

“Sir?” Clint can barely hear himself. “Phil?” He presses two trembling fingers under Phil’s jaw. There’s no pulse.

Clint spends half a second in complete, blank terror. Then he remembers that he’s a fucking SHIELD agent and, more than that, he’s Phil’s friend and this? This is not happening.

He rolls Phil off his lap and onto the floor. “Sorry, I know that’s gotta hurt your back,” he says to Phil’s too-still body and laces his hands together over Phil’s heart.

Phil’s ribcage creaks under the heel of Clint’s hand, fifteen chest compressions, before Clint forces Phil’s head back and pinches the bridge of his nose closed.

He understands in theory that you don’t give mouth to mouth to someone who’s been poisoned, but Phil didn’t get poisoned through his mouth and, anyway, it’s a risk Clint’s willing to take.

Phil doesn’t respond. Clint goes through another round and another and is half-way through chest compressions for the sixth time, when the door bursts open.

“Back-up!” Sitwell’s voice yells after a tiny pause. “We need a medic in here,” and then he’s falling to his knees next to Clint, doing his own test of Phil’s vitals, peeling his eyelids back.

Clint wants to snarl at him, but he’s saving his breath for CPR.

“What is it?” Sitwell asks urgently. Then, when Clint can’t make himself make words, “Barton. Status.”

“Poison,” Clint forces out. “I don’t know what. It’s in that water over there. I… I think I…” He can’t say _I think I killed him_ , even though he has, it’s so obvious that he has. He thrusts his still-damp t-shirt at Sitwell. “It’s on this. They could do tests or something.”

Sitwell says something quick and urgent into his radio and then there are more people in the room, SHIELD medics and portable suitcase machines and someone’s hands are on Clint’s shoulders, trying to pull him back.

He falls back onto his ass, watching and listening and clenching and unclenching his hands, which are useless now, no fucking help to Phil at all.

***

Clint sleeps in the hospital that night, bandaged knee stretched out and feet on the railing below Phil’s bed, shoulder wedged at a bad angle into the shitty visitor’s chair.

No one tries to make him move, not even Fury who comes by two times and makes Clint give him his mission debrief, like Clint won’t know that Fury’s just checking on Phil that way.

It’s approaching three a.m., the sun still nowhere to be seen, when Phil makes a loud, startled sound and tries to sit up in his bed.

Machines start beeping warningly, so Clint slaps the nearest one before he grabs Phil by the shoulder. 

“Hey, hey Coulson, hey, you okay there?”

Phil’s got a mask over his face and clear tubes tucked into his nostrils, wrapped around his ears to keep them in place. He swipes them all away with an impatient, slightly-unsteady hand then sinks back against his pillows, apparently exhausted.

“Clint?” he asks. 

Clint’s still holding his shoulder so he kind of followed him down and now he’s bent awkwardly over Phil, way too close all of a sudden.

“You’re okay,” Clint says even though the doctors are still kind of on the fence about that. Phil’s awake and that’s got to be a good sign.

Phil swallows loudly and licks his lips. In the dim hospital lighting, he looks pale and washed out, the stubble on his chin making him look weirdly vulnerable, rather than rugged and kickass like it normally would.

“Hang on, there’s water somewhere,” Clint says, looking around. He spots the jug on the top of a cabinet along the wall. There’s a sippy cup next to it, but no way is Phil going to drink out of that, so Clint quickly twists (and snaps) the lid off and fills it halfway.

“Thanks,” Phil croaks. His hand shakes when he tries to take it from Clint so Clint holds it with him, watching the plastic depress Phil’s bottom lip and trying not to think about how lax and helpless his mouth had felt under Clint’s while Clint tried to save him.

He puts the cup down when Phil gives it back and lets his hand drift to Phil’s knee, giving it a little shake and a pat. “Okay?”

“Mmm.” Phil blinks slowly, eyelashes a thick black line in the dark.

Clint smiles and feels something _twist_ in his chest, painful and real. “Go back to sleep, sir.”

Phil drops his hand on top of Clint’s, squeezing. Clint should maybe be embarrassed by how eagerly he grips back, but he’s not. Phil’s alive and Clint’s tired and not really feeling anything beyond that.

When Phil doesn’t try to say anything else, just turns his head toward Clint and slides straight back into sleep, Clint curls forward, elbow on the bed and their joined hands under his chin, enjoying watching him breathe.

***

They keep Phil in for three days, which is just long enough for Clint to start to go stir crazy and to have to talk himself down from running laps through the corridors or scaling the tempting drainpipe that he can see out the window.

Phil’s sleepy and weak for the first day and a half, which keeps Clint occupied, but he’s well on his way to cranky and bored by the time they spring him.

“I really don’t need an escort,” he says, when Clint walks him out and stands with him on the sidewalk, waiting for one of the baby agents to bring a car around. 

He’s wearing worn jeans and a Henley that’s so soft, it looks like it’s about to float away. Clint knows that’s because his back is still raw from the whip and the hash Clint made of clearing him up, but it’s still distracting.

“Good thing you’re not being given the choice, then,” Clint says cheerfully. He swings his arms and thinks about how great it is to be outdoors and how even greater it is that Phil’s here with him.

“We could walk,” Phil says suddenly, weirdly marrying up with Clint’s thoughts. At Clint’s doubtful look, he rolls his eyes. “I really am fine. And I could do with the fresh air.”

It’s a twenty-five minute walk from SHIELD Medical to Phil’s Chelsea apartment. Even if they take it slow because of Clint's knee and Phil's everything, it’s a warm day and Phil probably won’t damage himself by being outside for an hour.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint agrees, earning himself an eyeroll, which he takes to mean that he never really had any choice.

Phil sends the baby agent away and shoots Fury a text, then they set off. They stick to the least crowded areas of Midtown (which is like saying the least hot areas of hell), meandering slowly. 

There’s something stiff about the set of Phil’s shoulders, which Clint puts down to pain until they stop to rest at a table outside a Starbucks and Phil asks, “Are you okay?”

Clint frowns. “You’re the one who got whipped and poisoned?”

“And you’re the one who had to watch,” Phil says levelly. “Sitwell told me how you tried to save me.”

Clint thinks about pointing out that he didn’t watch Phil get whipped, but even he knows that that would be missing the point. “Had to keep you alive,” he says instead, shrugging like it’s nothing. “We’ve got a date, don’t we?”

Phil visibly startles, which is plain unsettling to watch. “I’m not going to hold you to that,” he says, like it was dumb of Clint to think anything different.

Someone’s left a half-drunk mug of coffee on their table. The milk on top is just starting to separate into little swirls. It’s gross, but still easier to look at than Phil’s face.

“Maybe you should,” Clint says, more a burst of words than a real sentence. “It’s not nice to lead a guy on, you know.”

Phil’s face does something complicated and weird. “Clint,” he says quietly. “Stop. I understand that you were trying to make me feel better in my last moments. That was good of you, but you don’t need to keep it up now.”

Clint’s insides feel twisty with frustration. He doesn’t know how to say shit like this. He doesn’t know how to _talk_. 

“You know why I always said no before, when you asked me out?” he asks. 

“Because you’re not attracted to me,” Phil says simply. He’s found a straw wrapper on the table and is ripping it into tiny, neatly efficient little squares. 

Clint laughs, way too loud and attracting attention from people passing by on the sidewalk. “I’m so fucking attracted to you that I go crazy with it sometimes,” he tells Phil’s hands.

Phil’s hands still. “Okay,” he says slowly, instead of demanding to know why Clint’s put them through a million years of frustration in that case. Clint thinks that nice of him.

“People kind of…” Clint looks up at Phil, makes a face. “People kind of leave me? You know that.”

Phil nods. He’s looking at Clint real closely, like Clint’s Fury or Captain America or Lola, something that deserves all of Phil’s attention.

“I liked what we have and I didn’t want it to change,” Clint says then laughs again, shakier this time, fuck. “But then you actually like, died in my fucking arms a couple days ago, so.” He spreads his hands helplessly. 

Phil grabs one of his hands. His skin is warm and dry against Clint’s. They’ve touched a lot lately, but this is the first time that Phil’s felt well, not that clammy, cold feeling of sick people and hospitals. Clint laces their fingers together and doesn’t let go. 

“I don’t want to lose you either,” he say seriously. “And for the record, my attraction to you makes me crazy, too.”

Clint smiles down at their hands. There’s a warm, swirling feeling unfolding from the middle of his chest. He kind of hates it and loves it in equal measure.

“Want to make this our first date?” he asks, finally looking up at Phil. Phil’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth and looking as awkward as Clint feels.

“Starbucks?” Phil asks with a little laugh.

Clint shrugs. “Yeah. C’mon, I’ll buy you a fuckuccino or whatever they’re called.”

“I’m sure that’s not what they’re called,” Phil says, smiling at him. The sun’s on his hair, making it glow more gold than brown and the freckles on his cheeks and up near his hairline are more noticeable than normal. 

“Whatever, stay here,” Clint says, wanting to keep Phil right there, just because. “I’ll go in and get us some drinks, okay?”

Phil doesn’t let go of his hand. “In five minutes,” he agrees. “I’m enjoying this moment first.”

Clint rolls his eyes so he doesn’t like, melt from embarrassment or pleasure or what-the-fuck-ever it is that he’s feeling right now.

“Nearly dying makes you weird, sir,” he says, ignoring the heat in his cheeks.

“I don’t know.” Phil rubs his thumb over Clint’s knuckles. “I’m okay with the outcome.”

“Yeah.” Clint smiles down at the table. He doesn’t want to go through that ever again, but yeah, he’s enjoying this moment, too.

/End


End file.
